President of the African Development Bank (AfDB), Akinwumi Adesina has stated that African youths are faced with lack of funds to turn their ideas into viable businesses.
Adesina also tasked governments and private sectors on the continent to grow, finance and support large scale youth-led businesses.
This statement was made by the AfDB president on Monday while speaking at a virtual high-level roundtable on Scaling up Financing for Youth Entrepreneurship and Innovation in Africa.
He said that the capacities and entrepreneurial drive of the youths in Africa needed to be unleashed to create jobs, noting that the youth must be supported to go beyond job seeking.
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“We must grow, finance and support large scale successes of youth-led businesses in Africa.
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“Existing financial institutions have failed to meet the needs of this rapidly growing population of the continent.
“This is due to lack of appropriate financing instruments; archaic credit risk assessments; focus on collaterals which the youth do not have; and lack of long-term financing horizon.
“That can deploy different types of financing instruments, from debt, equity, quasi-equity and guarantees over the life cycle of the businesses of the youth.”
Adesina said the continent has several programmes directed at improving the skills of the youth by countries, supported by bilateral and multilateral finance institutions.
